Incorporating Your Child's Culture Into Holidays

After completing an international adoption, there are many easy ways you can incorporate your child?s culture into your family. Holidays and celebrations offer the perfect opportunity to do this in a natural, yet intentional way.

Fuse Cultures Together

Find ways to blend elements of your child?s native culture with your own family traditions. If you have a tradition of giving each child an ornament every year on Christmas, give ornaments to everyone from your child?s home country. If you go caroling, learn a Christmas song from your child?s first country to add it to your repertoire. Most importantly, show your child that you appreciate their cultural background and want to be a part of it.

Honor Birthday Traditions

A small bit of research will give you ideas on how birthdays are celebrated in your child?s birth country. You can then take this information and create the party using entirely those traditions or by sprinkling them here and there. If you have a child adopted from China, you may be interested in learning about how to celebrate a Chinese-style birthday.

Mark Your Calendars

Countries such as those observing the Orthodox calendar celebrate their holidays on different days than what is common in other parts of the world.? You may choose to celebrate St. Nicholas Day with your child of Ukrainian heritage or celebrate Chinese New Year with your child born in China.

We celebrate Ethiopian Christmas and Ethiopian Easter separately from our Christmas and Easter as they fall on different days. In doing so, we are able to show our Ethiopian-born children that we value their culture and see it as a part of our family?s identity. We dress in traditional clothing that we purchased while in Ethiopia. We cook injera, doro wat, azita, and shiro. Most importantly, we get together with other Ethiopians and other Ethiopian adoptive families.

Bring Colour Home

Add flair to your holiday celebration by adding decorations or colour from your child?s birth country. You can do this by purchasing Christmas ornaments or other holiday d?cor when you are visiting their country and embellishing the room with colours symbolic of the country or its flag.

Serve Signature Dishes

Food is an easy way to incorporate your child?s native culture into your family?s holiday celebration. You can choose to cook a traditional dish for that particular holiday or just a dish that highlights your child?s birth country. The familiar smells and tastes are sure to bring a smile to your child?s face!

Dress to Impress

Having the entire family wear traditional clothing from your child?s native country unifies the family and shows your child that you are embracing their culture. If you are inviting guests to your celebration, it is a good experience for them to try to come in traditional clothing as well or at least wear something representative of the culture. A celebration highlighting India could require party guests to learn how to wear a Sari. This would prove both fun and educational for them.

Celebrate with Music & Games

Find games that are played in your child?s homeland and duplicate them at home. For many traditional African games, all the supplies that are needed are rocks or beans, though others require more planning and supplies. Playing traditional music and learning dances native to the country are fun for the whole family. YouTube has video tutorials for dances from most countries.

Teach Others

You could even plan a day with your child?s teacher, so that you and your child can go into their classroom and teach the other students about the holiday traditions of their first country. Be sure to make it fun by bringing music, food to share and involving the other students in an interactive activity such as a game.

Source: http://www.theadoptionmagazine.com/2012/08/28/incorporating-your-childs-culture-into-holidays/

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